The Vandy Loss Sucks, but Let's Take a Look at Reality ...

#28
#28
CNCVol88 said:
Reality is you don't lose to Vandy. This team did. This is starting to look a lot like 2016/2017
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Your reality is skewed. You've not taken one snap, ran one drill. I'm 50, and TN has loss to Vandy multiple times. So this isn't the first time it has happened. Touch some grass and grow up. How old are you?!
 
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#31
#31
1. Happens to the top tier teams every year. There's no reason to expect nor accept a drastic drop-off in talent or production year-to-year, especially when the transfer portal is a thing.
2. Injuries are part of the game, and every team has to deal with them. This circles back to point one. Are we to expect and accept such drastic season defining drop-offs because 3 or so starters miss multiple games? I'd say year 5 pushes us past that point.
3. Nico leaving or staying was not going to push the needle either way for 2025. He was just a below average starter in the SEC, and all our games last year were won by the run game and defense. The run game was fine this year in part to our offseason upgrade at QB being able to complete passes more than 10 yards downfield. Not sure about the random love for Simpson. He didn't win the job for 2 years if we exclude his freshman season, and it should be emphasized he lost out to Milroe twice... that's not a good thing to say the least. Simpson is not some program defining QB; he's a competent SEC starter is all.
4. All of the teams we've lost to are not the great teams of old; these aren't the Saban or Kirby teams of the early 2020s. In fact, I'd say Oklahoma is still the most embarrassing loss of the season. That team wins purely off opportunistic takeaways against Alabama, Tennessee, and Mizzou. Just this past weekend both UGA and Alabama escaped games against inferior opponents by one possession. The typical excuse of "rivalry weekends are weird" don't mean much to me when our rival walked into Neyland and blew us out in the 2nd half.
5. This was posted in another thread, but we had very comparable ratio of underclassmen of 64% compared to Georgia (63%), Texas (62%), Ole Miss (60%), and Oklahoma (58%). It seems all those teams had a better year than we did despite such "young" players stinking up their fields too.
 
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#32
#32
Volhoops said:
The reality is Heupel got his butt handed to him by Vanderbilt at home. That's something that is extremely hard to over come. Has there been a coach that made it here after losing to Vanderbilt ?
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To be fair, this is the best Vanderbilt team in history. In the entire history of Vanderbilt football they’ve never won 10 games.

Pathetic stat of the day: Vanderbilt is the last Power 4 team to win 10 games. Meaning every other team in a power league had won 10 games at some point in their existence other than Vandy, until yesterday.
 
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#33
#33
titansvolsfaninga said:
Your reality is skewed. You've not taken one snap, ran one drill. I'm 50, and TN has loss to Vandy multiple times. So this isn't the first time it has happened. Touch some grass and grow up. How old are you?!
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Correct and that results in Coaches getting fired at the University of Tennessee.

2019 and 2020 - Bye bye Pruitt
2018 - Pruitt's First year off the at the time literal worst year UT has ever had. He got a pass
2016 and 2017 - Bye Bye Butch Jones
2013 - Butch's First year. Was given a pass
2012 - Bye Bye Derek Dooley

Before that, 2005 which was Fulmer's worst year to date. Before that. I was a Sophomore in High School before I knew what a loss to Vandy was. The expectation should be to beat Vandy. This wasn't the first time Tennessee's beaten Florida either but I guarentee you the Florida fans see us running them out of the swamp as apocalyptic as we should see vandy running us out of neyland.
 
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#34
#34
Volholic said:
Yeah but we definitely need major staff adjustments
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Do you think there is a football coach vending machine somewhere? Recycling the same coaches through different programs get you the same result. It's always been the players. Schemes are great, but lacking players will make great coaches look bad. If the safety don't like contact, what is a coach going to do? Put someone else back there that doesn't know the schemes? It is what it is.
 
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#35
#35
Volhoops said:
The reality is Heupel got his butt handed to him by Vanderbilt at home. That's something that is extremely hard to over come. Has there been a coach that made it here after losing to Vanderbilt ?
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This is relevant because 2025 is typical of the type of team Vanderbilt normally has?

Vanderbilt easily has the oldest roster in the SEC. In fact, I've never seen an SEC team with so many players on their roster listed as "graduate." Good luck next year, Commies.

VU has the oldest roster in the SEC - NEW VandyMania.com

www.vandymania.com www.vandymania.com
 
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#36
#36
RDU VOL#14 said:
To be fair, this is the best Vanderbilt team in history. In the entire history of Vanderbilt football they’ve never won 10 games.

Pathetic stat of the day: Vanderbilt is the last Power 4 team to win 10 games. Meaning every other team in a power league had won 10 games at some point in their existence other than Vandy, until yesterday.
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Proof positive that anybody can buy a team. Welcome to college football 2025.
 
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#37
#37
CNCVol88 said:
Correct and that results in Coaches getting fired at the University of Tennessee.

2019 and 2020 - Bye bye Pruitt
2018 - Pruitt's First year off the at the time literal worst year UT has ever had. He got a pass
2016 and 2017 - Bye Bye Butch Jones
2013 - Butch's First year. Was given a pass
2012 - Bye Bye Derek Dooley

Before that, 2005 which was Fulmer's worst year to date. Before that. I was a Sophomore in High School before I knew what a loss to Vandy was. The expectation should be to beat Vandy. This wasn't the first time Tennessee's beaten Florida either but I guarentee you the Florida fans see us running them out of the swamp as apocalyptic as we should see vandy running us out of neyland.
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These posts that treat losing to Vanderbilt in 2025 equally with losing to Derek Mason's teams are ridiculous.
 
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#39
#39
DiderotsGhost said:
This was always going to be a down year.

Sorry, folks, but I called it at the beginning of the season. I said back then that 7-5 or 8-4 was the expectation. The reasons why:

* Loss of key defensive players to NFL Draft. We lost James Pearce Jr and Omar Norman-Lott. 2 players who were always going to be difficult to replace
* Key defensive injuries. What hurt even more was all the injuries - Jermod McCoy, Ricky Gibson, Arion Carter, and Jaxson Moi. Our secondary was really held together by duct tape this season and did better than expected. I'm particularly encouraged by the emergence of Ty Redmond.
* Nico defection. Look, we can all agree that Joey was better than Nico. But it's also rare for a QB to come in late in the Spring and thrive in Year 1, no matter how "senior" they are --- normally these types of QBs don't thrive till Year 2. The brutal truth ... we lost the Alabama game back in 2021 when Bama landed Ty Simpson over us. But we've landed G-Mac and Faizon Brandon in back-to-back classes now.
* Tougher schedule than anticipated. Everyone thought we had an easy schedule at the beginning of the season. Turns out, a lot of those teams were much better than expected. We played 3 top 10 teams; arguably 4 if you count Vandy. We ended up with an unexpectedly polarized schedule.
* Youngest team we've had in years. For whatever reason, everyone seemed to be ignoring this. This is one of our youngest teams in years. And it's tough to win in the SEC with a very young team.

I never expected this to be a CFP campaign type of season. It's honestly a miracle that if we hit a single FG, we're 9-3.

This isn't to suggest there shouldn't be changes. The defensive performance against Vandy was awful. But those who want to pull out the "FAHR EVERYONE!" playbook do more harm than good. Banks was, the prior 2 seasons, one of the best DCs in the country. We had the #4 ranked defense in America last year; and #21 in 2023.

We have one of our best recruiting classes in a long while coming in. We have a horde of promising young players. Expectations have risen again after the dismal Dooley/Jones/Pruitt triumvirate, but let's not go insane. Heupel took over a bad situation and turned the program into something again. This is a place people want to come.

I can't guarantee success, but I think burning down the house would be the worst thing possible right now.

GBO!
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Most here lost you at “realty”. They think it’s 1998 and believe every kid & coach in America wants to come here.
 
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#42
#42
Successful P4 guys at other schools don’t really dream of getting in this meatgrinder. $7-8 mil at Ariz St, Utah, Texas Tech, etc is fine with them.
 
#45
#45
DiderotsGhost said:
This was always going to be a down year.

* Nico defection.
* Tougher schedule than anticipated.
* Youngest team we've had in years.
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I disagree with these points.

By all accounts losing Nico allowed us to win more games that we would have. we would have lost 1-2 more games with Nico and his fat f#ck dad being a cancer in our locker room. this is a fact.

I also completely dispute that our schedule was tougher than anticipated. we played 4 out of 12 games against teams with winning records. yes all were ranked but 3 out of 4 of those games were in Knoxville and completely winnable without massive collapses. I also said that Tennessee would lose 4 games but that was BEFORE I knew how bad Kentucky Florida and Arkansas were going to be. IMO we could have easily won 11 games this year with our talent and competent coaching. The ONLY team we played that was tougher than expected was Vanderbilt but there were many teams that were way weaker than anticipated.

and finally I don't agree that a really young team means anything. Georgia also has a really young team and it didn't stop them.
 
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#47
#47
CNCVol88 said:
Its Vanderbilt. I'm tired of people making excuses for being driven out of Neyland by Vandy.
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It's one thing to lose a nailbiter at the last second to the best team Vandy has fielded since before the forward pass was invented...but it's another thing entirely to get skull-drug up and down your own field by a team led by a Johnny Manziel clone who has a drunk brother getting arrested in the stands while he's wiping his arse with our defense.

Yeah, I'm still mad...
 
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#48
#48
titansvolsfaninga said:
Your reality is skewed. You've not taken one snap, ran one drill. I'm 50, and TN has loss to Vandy multiple times. So this isn't the first time it has happened. Touch some grass and grow up. How old are you?!
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As a historian has a TN coach ever survived losing to Vanderbilt. I was trying to remember. Let's keep it from the 90s up till now.
 
#50
#50
CNCVol88 said:
Its Vanderbilt. I'm tired of people making excuses for being driven out of Neyland by Vandy.
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It's not an excuse. Vanderbilt is simply a much better team. Their approach to football has changed with the portal. They didn't use to take transfers from just anywhere ..... and they are throwing money around to boot.
 
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